


Disco Elysium ephemera

by Jake_the_space_cat



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Recovery, Silly, Sleep, Sleep Paralysis, Trauma, drabble-ish, random stuff I'm eh about but it's not doing anyone any good trapped in a Google Doc forever, supra-natural cop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29562597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jake_the_space_cat/pseuds/Jake_the_space_cat
Summary: Just a spot for bits and bobs that I'm like 'wow, that sure is a thing I wrote, what do I do with that' and don't know whether to preserve or not. So I'll just paste them in this virtual scrapbook here and people can flip through if they feel like it. /trying to work through writer's block/writer's embarrassment /is that a termI tend to write in fragments and bounce around in time and AUs, so I've gota masterlist of chronology for all of my DE pieces here.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	1. It's Like Kissing, Only There's a Winner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this piece of fanart](https://yan-may-fire.tumblr.com/post/643370144607977472/kim-in-the-spotlight), and the idea that Harry might have forgotten everything but the really broad strokes of sex.

You’ve seen Kim in direct sunlight.

He’s fine with black pepper, best-known ward against the Vortex-born.

He has a reflection. 

He might be able to read minds, though, because he stops biting your neck.

“Harry, if you’re thinking I’m a supra-natural creature of the dark…”

He *might* be able to read minds, but it’s also true that, over the past year, he’s gotten very good at noticing when you’re struggling with the basic facts of reality.

“I’m still a very normal human being. Who enjoys biting. Carefully.”

That’s *exactly* what a blütkin would say.

It’s also what someone who’s just realized you’ve probably forgotten about even the mildest kinks might say.

“Well.” You clear your throat. “I think I enjoy being bitten.”

Let’s see what else you can remember.


	2. It's Easy to Forget

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi and a nameless detective have been running around Martinaise all day without a break. Kim finally objects.

“Detective.” He has his hands on his knees, working to catch his breath after another sprint down the length of the impromptu settlement that is the lorry traffic jam. “It’s 4 pm, and we have run in and out of the Whirling and the Frittte--” He pauses, trying to calculate. “ _Many_ times.”

While you’re counting down the number of seconds you’ve learned it usually takes for him to stop breathing hard, sigh, and straighten back up again, you consider his statement.

You’ve run in and out of the harbor complex, Cuno’s shack, Crime, Romance, and Biographies of Famous People, every room in the abandoned wreck of most of the Doomed Commercial District, several strangers’ apartments, and the pawn shop, too. So what makes the Whirling and the Frittte special?

 _...He’s right!_ Why didn’t you see it?

“We’ve been risking cross-contaminating innocent hither-to untouched businesses with the malevolent economic energies of the curse!”

Okay, stay calm, you’ve got to think this through. “Most fortuna obscuritas phenomenon are bound to specific locations by highly concentrated leylic residue and almost impossible to spread via physical means, but--”

“No, detective.”

“You don’t think it’s fortuna obscur--”

“I think--” He’s holding up a hand, one finger raised, and you find yourself suddenly physically and psychologically incapable of interrupting. “--that the Whirling and the Frittte _both sell food._ ”

\----- 

A few minutes later, crunching through the bag of chips you could barely afford, you have to admit - for someone who wouldn’t be able to tell a pseudoplasm from a demiplasmid, Lt. Kim Kitsuragi is a remarkably perceptive guy.


	3. The Morning Ritual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know what sucks? Sleep paralysis/false awakenings.
> 
> Have fun with 'em, Harry.
> 
> Characters: Harry du Bois.
> 
> Ships: None.
> 
> Chapter-specific tags: Post-canon, trauma, recovery, sleep, sleep paralysis, nightmares, headcanon.

The nightmares recede as the months continue. There's no longer a brutal narrative that shoves you out of sleep back into reality every morning. Medication, painful sobriety, counseling, time, freedom from the burden of memory--you don't know which of those many variables has made the difference. But something pushes the nightmares away.

And leaves something worse.

* * *

Wake up. There’s panic behind your eyes, in the palms of your hands, in the set of your shoulders, in the rough anxious heat of your mind. You’re not safe. But you’re awake. You can get away from whatever’s making you not safe.

Find your body. Where is it? You can see the bed, see yourself, but everything’s slow. Sticky. Your nerve endings cut off somewhere just behind your temples. You don’t have time for the neurons to grow down and out into the rest of you. You have to move now.

(There are no voices to help you. No one to tell you what's happening. You're alone within yourself. You're trapped.)

Get up. The world is heavy around you, filled with soft electrical shocks. Is that your hand gripping the side of the bed? Are you pulling yourself up? Are those your feet sliding down and around to hit the worn carpet? Are you standing? Are you there? Is this your body, standing, leaning forward, trying to walk away?

(Or is this your body, still in bed, still held down by terrible, invisible weight?)

Move. Get to the door. Turn the knob. _Wake up._

Get to the door. Turn the knob. _Wake up._

Turn the knob. _Wake up._

_Wake_

_up._ There’s panic behind your eyes, in the palms of your hands, in the set of your shoulders, in the rough anxious heat of your mind. You’re not safe. But you’re awake. You can get away from whatever’s making you not safe.

Find your body. Where is it...

* * *

Every morning, the sequence sets in. The alarm clock rings. You set it yourself; you do this to yourself. You don’t hear the alarm, but you feel it. You know it’s out there, dragging you up into this limbo purgatory wind-and-rewind that feels like it takes hours but maybe takes only minutes. Only seconds. You feel the frustrated terror and exhaustion settle into your throat.

You think you yell. You think you scream for help.

_Help. Please. I'm awake!_

_Someone, wake me up!_

_I need to wake up!_

_Please._

Every morning, after an endless hell of reiterations, you finally free yourself. You finally claw your way up to meet reality.

But at the end of every day, when you hit your bed again (and more times than not, you don’t even have the energy to take off your clothes), you’re not sure if you ever really left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've not experienced false awakenings, they're real and they are the *worst.* With the mess that he's made of his physical, emotional, and mental state, I'd be surprised if Harry didn't struggle with them. So here we are.


End file.
